New Delhi : The campaign ended on Tuesday for 53 Assembly seats in 12 districts of Uttar Pradesh going to polls on Thursday in the fourth phase with the rivals mounting road shows in the holy city of Allahabad.
BJP President Amit Shah went on an – km journey on the roads of Allahabad, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi traversed 12 km of city’s roads drawing impressive crowds.
The outcome of this phase is very important for both SP and the Congress because the two parties had won 24 and 6 seats respectively in 2012 electoral battle, as against 15 seats won by BSP, 5 by BJP and 3 by the Peace Party.
Campaigning in this phase became very bitter, touch a new low as leaders from all sides indulged in verbal attacks on their rivals. The BJP is very keen to improve its tally in this phase and that is why Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed five rallies in the last three days. The BJP has tried its best to polarise the voters on religious lines.
Modi even resorted to accusing the Akhilesh government of building Kabirstan (graveyard) for Muslims in villages and not samshans (cremation grounds for Hindus) and favouring Muslim by giving electricity during the full month of fasting, Ramzan, while denying the same to Hindus on Diwali. He said that this discrimination must end.
The political observers said these remarks were clearly an attempt to woo the Hindus, but Modi was perhaps not properly briefed that the Hindus do not like any cremation ground in the village as they prefer to perform the last rites on the banks of the nearby rivers. The Congress, however, approached the Election Commission to take stern action against Modi and derecognise the BJP for communalising the election. Verbal attacks on each other were clearly a manifestation of the parties to arouse passion and hatred for their rivals.
The fourth phase includes Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s constituency of Rai Bareilli along with Pratapgarh Kaushambi and districts of Bundelkhand consisting of Jhansi, Jalaun, Lalitpur, Mahoba, Banda, Hamirpur, Chitrakoot, and Fathepur.
There are 680 candidates in the fray. In this phase, Congress MP in Rajya Sabha Pramod Tiwari’s daughter Aradhna Mishra is in the fray from Rampur Khas constituency, while notorious criminal and strongman Rahguraj Pratap Singh is contesting as an independent from Kunda in Pratapgarh.
Also at stake in this phase is the fate of leader of the opposition in UP assembly Swami Prasad Maurya, who had deserted the BSP and had joined the BJP a few months back. His son Utkarsh Maurya is in the fray. SP leader Reoti Raman Singh’s son Ujjawal Raman Singh is also contesting from Karchana in Allahabad. The leader of the Gulabi gang Sampat Pal, who had joined the Congress in 2012, is contesting on the Congress ticket from Banda.
A total of 189 crorepati candidates is in the fray in this phase while 116 have declared criminal cases against them. There are 98 political parties in the electoral battle, including six national parties. 5 state parties and 87 unrecognised parties, besides 200 independent candidates.
